On a gloomy night in 1816, as a storm brewed on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, the famed English poet Lord Byron challenged his friends to a contest -- to write a ghost story. The famous result of that night was Mary Shelley's breathtaking novel Frankenstein, which appeared in print two years later and has retained its hold on the popular imagination for almost two centuries. Less known was John William Polidori's work, the first vampire novel. And the evening also begat a curse: within a few years of Frankenstein's publication, nearly all of those involved met untimely deaths. The Monsters tells the riveting story of the real-life characters surrounding the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Drawing on private diaries, personal letters, and contemporary accounts, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler have crafted a spectacular narrative of artistic creation and personal destruction. They reveal not just the true origins of two of the most famous monsters in popular culture, but also the monstrous and tragic nature of the young people who gathered that summer on the shores of Lake Geneva. - Jacket flap.